


Fast Food

by ALittleBitofThis



Series: This Friendly Neighborhood [1]
Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Fluff, Food Issues, Gen, Homeless Peter Parker, Homelessness, On the Run, Post-Spider-Man: Far From Home, Precious Peter Parker, Spider-Man Interacting with New Yorkers, Steve Rogers's Metabolism, Wholesome af, community food drive
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-26
Updated: 2020-12-26
Packaged: 2021-03-11 05:00:23
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,182
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28345773
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ALittleBitofThis/pseuds/ALittleBitofThis
Summary: Being on the run with an enhanced metabolism isn't easy, and it doesn't take too long to notice Spider-Man looking a bit thinner. What starts as an effort to keep the friendly neighborhood wall-crawler fed soon escalates into a community drive feeding people in need across the city. Pure wholesomeness. New Yorkers are ride or die for Spider-Man, no matter what.
Series: This Friendly Neighborhood [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2075883
Comments: 10
Kudos: 300





	Fast Food

Peter heard the shouts reach his ears ever so softly, and he opened his eyes. The underside of the water tower greeted him, and Peter army-crawled to the edge of the roof. There were some people hurrying away from a pizza shop a few blocks down. Out of all the pizza places in Queens, of course it had to be the one closest to where he was currently hiding out.

Peter webbed his overstuffed backpack to one of the water tower’s legs and grabbed his mask. At least he was already in costume. He never really bothered to wear civvies anymore, as the suit was more efficient, and Mysterio had told everyone who he was anyway. It wasn’t like he could go to school to worry about their fashion standards.

Spider-Man took a deep breath and stepped off the ledge. The free fall felt nice as usual, only to be cut short when a web line went taut and carried Peter toward the pizzeria. The strong scent of Italian food slapped Peter in the face, and if the impending cops weren’t enough, Peter’s urges to devour the entire store were a strong motivator to get in and out fast.

“Just toss the 20’s in the bag,” The masked robber ordered. An older, scraggly looking man, hurried to comply. A younger employee, maybe a college student, stood nervously near the order window. The robber hesitated for another second. “The jar, too.”

“A tip jar? Man, that’s cold!” Spider-Man cried. The robber turned to face the superhero, and the instant his gun was no longer pointed at the cashier, Spider-Man shot a web at it. Spider-Man pulled the weapon from the man’s hands, letting it clatter across the floor, and then he sprung at him. It only took Peter one punch to knock him down, and a few webs to pin him firmly to the floor. He erupted in a string of obscenities, so Peter webbed his mouth, making sure to miss his nose so he could still breathe.

“Thanks, Spider-Man!” The man was beyond relieved. Peter straightened up.

“No problem,” Spider-Man said calmly. “You didn’t see where I went.” He shot a web out the window to the fire escape across the street, but before he had a chance to actually leave, the man spoke again.

“Wait!” He called. Peter paused and turned his head back toward the counter. The man was watching him worriedly. Despite the dark colors of Spider-Man’s suit, the pizzeria was bright enough to see the outlines of ribs. The skin-tight fit meant that the suit didn’t hide anything, including the fact that he looked underweight. “Take one of these pizzas.”

Peter softened. “Thank you, but I don’t have any money.”

“No need to pay,” The man replied. “I own this shop. It’s nothing.You really did us a solid tonight.” Peter frowned. He wasn’t going to lie to himself. It smelled really, really good in the shop, and his stomach growled at the possibility of a solid meal. However, he could hear sirens in the distance, growing ever closer.

“You’d get in trouble,” Spider-Man waved his hand dismissively, even though it hurt his soul. “And it wouldn’t be fair to others who pay for it. Give the pizza to someone in need.”

“You look in need,” The man insisted. Peter raised his eyebrows under the mask. What did that mean? Regardless, he told himself, he couldn’t take the pizza. He didn’t want anyone else to get hurt because of him. He turned back to the door to leave. “Tomorrow night,” The man said decidedly. “I’m going to leave a pizza up top. 10pm. It’ll be there no matter what. Take it or leave it.”

Spider-Man shook his head and left.

* * *

Peter spent the entirety of the next day investigating. He was following a person that he suspected was part of Beck’s crew, but unfortunately, they were extraordinarily boring. Peter hung his head in disappointment as he waited for them to finish getting their groceries. He needed to get a good lead soon. Beck’s crew was out there, and he needed to get evidence before he turned himself in, or else they’d find a way to kill Peter before the police found the crew themselves.

Peter wanted to turn himself in, really, just to have some peace of mind back, but he knew he wouldn’t get it. He couldn’t let the government experiment on him, but if they didn’t have some use for him, he’d have to go to prison. He knew he’d go insane on the Raft, from what files he’d seen about it, and if he went to Rikers, it would only be a matter of time before he was shanked or murdered by an inmate or hitman. Peter believed in the police, but he couldn’t risk being a suspect while they figured it out. He had to solve this himself.

The sky was growing dark, and with a heavy sigh, Peter decided that this woman was a dead end. He swung back to his water tower. Water towers had become a secret weapon of sorts— he could climb them to get water, and sleeping under one allowed him to utilize otherwise-inaccessible places without being visible to helicopters and drones. It was as safe as he could manage these days.

By the time Spider-Man actually got back, it was dark, and he was dizzy with lack of nutrition. He’d scrounged up some tossed food via dumpster diving, but no matter what he did, it never seemed to be enough for his metabolism. Peter laid on his back under the water tower and stared at the metal hungrily, listing all the foods he could think of that came in tin or aluminum wrappers of the same color. Butter, cream cheese, chicken biscuits, diet soda, three musketeers, any of Aunt May’s leftovers…

He was just making himself hungrier. As some police cars passed by down below, Peter thought back to the offer from last night. He felt bad for even considering it. He didn’t want people to think Spider-Man was a freeloader, but, man, he was getting really hungry. He could do it as a one-time thing. One time only.

Spider-Man made his way to the roof. He found a pizza sitting there. After making sure that there were no booby traps or hidden cop cars, Peter carefully landed and took the pizza. He had to consciously pace himself from eating it too quickly, but he felt so, so much better. He slept better that night than he had in at least a week. It was amazing.

The next night, Peter laid in his spot and spent a solid hour debating. He didn’t want to take the pizza again. But also, no one else would be able to get up there. It would go to waste. It wasn’t like a civilian would actually take it, and in the morning when the shop owner returned, it would already be bad. Peter knew he shouldn’t make a habit out of anything these days, so he avoided going to the same place more than once, but in the end, hunger won out. Peter got a pizza _and_ a whole box of doughnuts, and he absolutely devoured them.

* * *

On the third day, Peter landed on the roof, and he did a double take. There were three pizzas from separate places, two boxes of doughnuts, a 20-piece box of Chicken McNuggets, and a liter of soda. Ok… that was a lot. The guilt came back. Where would this food have normally gone? Was he taking money away from these businesses? Or was he possibly starving other dumpster divers? Peter made a quick decision. After setting two pizzas to the side, he stacked up the food as best he could and secured it as one package with webbing.

Then, he swung to the nearest underpass, where he found a group of other homeless people hanging out near a small fire.

“Hey,” Spider-Man said shyly. He set down the parcel of food. “Can you pass this out to some others? Split it up as best as you can?” He didn’t feel comfortable enough to stick around, so he left before they had a chance to say anything else to him.

Things accelerated pretty quickly after that. The food supply each night got bigger and bigger. Spider-Man spent a few hours per night delivering several packages of food to various homeless encampments, and the word of mouth was causing the food supply to grow even more. As the days passed, Spider-Man even got less skittish. He went from dropping the food on the edges of gatherings to seeking out familiar faces and handing the food over personally. It wasn’t uncommon for Spider-Man to be offered some of the food he’d brought as he tried to walk away, and he didn’t like to swing and eat, so he’d eat with them from time to time. He went from just listening in on conversations to adding small interjections to being an active participant.

* * *

Peter knew it was too good to be true, but that didn’t lessen his disappointment when reality came crashing down. Almost two dozen businesses were donating to the cache daily, and Spider-Man was coming into contact with at least a hundred civilians per night. Collaboration was happening between the organizers as well. Boxes were more often duct-taped shut to make them swinging-friendly, and at least half the food was already placed into separate piles by 10pm so that Spider-Man spent less time splitting things up himself. An operation so large was bound to draw attention.

Peter shouldn’t have been surprised, then, when he had the sudden urge to step to his side and a tranquilizer dart embedded itself in a pizza box. Spider-Man swirled around, not seeing anyone immediately, but not taking the time to find them. He started toward the edge of the roof to run, now noticing the multiple swat officers placed on the surrounding buildings. The jig was up.

“NYPD! Stop!” A megaphone projected. Spider-Man sped up and jumped off the edge. He shot a web off, starting to swing, and gunfire came at him from below. They really took things seriously since Beck had accused him of the terrorist attack on London. He was able to avoid getting hit himself, but one snapped his line, and Peter felt his stomach drop as he started to fall. He got another web attached to a helicopter, but it started to lower, and he didn’t realize until he was almost hitting the ground. Spider-Man dropped his line and rolled to a stop in the middle of the street.

He got back to his feet and web-slingshotted out of there, but it took him half an hour to lose the police. The fact that he managed to lose them at all was due to literally diving into the back of a garbage truck, as their heat tracking would’ve been able to see into anything that wasn’t already warm. Peter let the truck drive him around for a bit, and then he got up to jump out. His side stung, and Peter hissed. He looked down, seeing blood on his side and thigh. Crap. That was that.

* * *

A few days passed, during which Peter wasn’t able to get back to his stuff at the water tower, and there seemed to be a collective disappointment on the part of the city. Spider-Man had pretty much plopped down, sleeping off his sadness in batches of a few hours at time before he inevitably had to move again. Soon enough, the community had fallen back into its old ways of scrambled food and spread out homeless folk.

That was, until Spider-Man was patrolling one morning. There were a couple people on a rooftop, hanging out with a picnic blanket, and as Spider-Man whizzed by, he heard a: “Hey!”

He reversed course and swung back. Peter put on his best ‘Spider-Man’ voice. “What can I help you with?”

“My girlfriend just wanted a picture,” A woman said. Spider-Man looked around to make sure they were alone.

“Sure. Yeah,” He gave a small smile before remembering his mask was on. He accepted the phone from the woman. “Do you want to get in too?”

“No. Just you two. I’ll shake your hand after,” The woman said. Spider-Man stood with the woman’s girlfriend to take a selfie, and then he handed the phone over. “Thank you,” She said. She held her hand out to shake.

“You’re welcome. Let—“ Peter cut off when the handshake felt weird. He looked down at his hand when he pulled it back to see a folded up piece of paper.

“See you later,” The woman gave him a soft smile and walked back to her girlfriend. Spider-Man left the roof in a confused daze, and a couple minutes later, he finally stopped to look at the paper in his hand. He unfolded it. It was an address and a time. Huh…

Peter swung past the address to scope things out, and it didn’t look like anything suspicious was going on. He showed up 10 minutes before the time, too, just to throw off any kind of ambush that was being planned. This certainly wasn’t an ambush. There were a few people milling around, getting food together. They were back. Spider-Man did one more canvas of the area before landing on the roof. The pizzeria owner smiled broadly.

“Spider-Man! There you are,” He held his hand out, and Spider-Man gave a tiny fist bump, careful not to hit too hard. The man looked him over. “You’re looking better. Not so deathly thin.”

“Thanks,” Spider-Man said, unsure if it was a compliment or just an observation.

“Okay, so, new updates,” He clasped his hands together and motioned to the boxes of food scattered around. “We’re going to be using different drop locations each night, so if we don’t get you the address the night before, you’ll have to look out for people on the rooftops again. They’ll wear red and black to be a bit more visible.”

He leaned down and picked up a plain white box, opening it to reveal a pizza. “We all pitched in to get non-descript boxes, so businesses can still donate without things getting traced back to them. Detectives were using trash from your drops. No one got in trouble this time, but since our non-housed folk move around so much, they know we unfortunately can’t make the drops without you. We’ll take care of that end. Just keep finding them and getting the food out.” 

“I don’t want anyone to get in trouble,” Spider-Man said hesitantly. “What if they charge you with aiding and abetting?”

“We could argue that you’re just volunteering with a community drive. You just happen to be a key volunteer,” The man shrugged. “They don’t know you’re eating this. You are eating some, right?”

“Um… yeah… not a ton, don’t worry,” Spider-Man said sheepishly. “A box or two a night. That’s all.”

“You need to be eating. We want to take care of our neighbor wall-crawler, and if you have to justify it, consider that you’re burning calories with all that swinging,” He said confidently. Peter smiled under the mask. He looked around at the operation they had going. A woman approached with a stack of boxes.

“Hey, Spider-Man! You want to web this up?” She gave a warm smile and set them on a larger box between them. “I think it’s really great, what you’re doing.”

“I couldn’t do it without you. I think this is amazing. Really,” Peter said, and he meant it. He knelt down and used some webs to create a sling for the food. “Thank you.”

“Thank us by keeping everyone fed,” She said.

“Yes Ma’am,” Spider-Man stood up and grabbed the top of the first parcel in one hand. He carried it to the edge of the roof. “Be right back!”

* * *

“Spider-Man. Check this out,” Hank said. He was one of the regular people Peter saw.

“Hmm?” Spider-Man leaned closer as he chewed on his pizza.

“I got some WiFi today, and I took these screenshots. You’re trending on Twitter,” Hank handed a cracked phone over to him. Spider-Man scrolled through.

**@HorsesL0ve:** _ Spider-Man’s food delivery program is the most wholesome thing I’ve heard of this week. #foodslinger _

**@Skeptic_Truther:** _ Does anyone have confirmation that Spider-Man is actually the one moving all this food around? #foodslinger _

**@Spider_Fan1203:** _ The government means to tell us the guy distributing food donations is a terrorist? What?! Miss me with those accusations #foodslinger _

**@N00bSlayer69:** _ Hey @DoorDash, can you sponsor Spider-Man’s #foodslinger drive? I bet he’s faster than @UberEats _

**@Flash007:** _ Has anyone actually met Peter Parker? He couldn’t afford a can of soup. Don’t think he’s the #foodslinger _

**@BuzzFeed:** _ As if we needed another reason to love him: Spider-Man delivers food to the homeless. _

**@JuicyBerger:** _ Where can I donate to the #foodslinger? I love seeing the community come together this way. _

**@NYPDnews:** _ While we appreciate the idea of a mobile food drive, we can not endorse any unofficial food drives. Spider-Man and his operations are still under investigation. Please donate to your local homeless shelters. _

**@HarleyMechanic:** _ @NYPDnews Chill out. It’s just snacks. Are you jealous? hangry _

**@IronManStanFanDan:** _ We love you Spider-Man! Keep up the good #foodslinger work! _

Spider-Man felt warmth flood through him at the warm comments, and he handed the phone back to Hank. “That’s really nice.”

“What you’re doing is good, kid,” Hank patted his shoulder. “You’re done for the night, right?”

“Yup,” He finished his slice of pizza and looked around the area. They were on the edge of the ‘city center’ of this tent city, where some space had been left often for people to gather. Someone was playing guitar, and a dog skidded past the boxes of food toward a stick. Peter watched the dog bring it back to its owner with a wagging tail.

“Spider-Man!” Someone called. Spider-Man looked toward the source of the voice and saw a woman named Felicia walking toward him with two others. “We saw a few officers near the edge of the camp. You might want to get going.”

Spider-Man sighed and pulled his mask back over his mouth. They did a good job covering their tracks, but it didn’t mean any of the authorities had stopped trying to find him. He was getting closer on his Beck investigation, but not close enough yet. This was still the status quo.

“I guess I’ll head out. Tara! You mind tossing me one of those burgers?” Tara nodded and tossed him a small silver package from a bag.

“See you later, Spider-Man,” Hank smiled broadly. Spider-Man webbed the burger to his side for later. He was finally hitting the point where he wasn’t always hungry.

“Tomorrow night,” Peter promised. He shot a web at the overhang, and he was off.

“No, I haven’t seen him in at least a couple weeks,” A friend of his lied to the officers as Spider-Man passed over their heads, undetected. “You won’t find anything here but community.”


End file.
